Galloway gone! Ward ousted! Liberal Democrats demolished! Labour decimated! SNP in.

The country knew by 10pm on Thursday night that there had been a political bloodbath.

Contrary to all the opinion polls putting Labour and the Conservatives level the Exit Poll published at 10pm told a different story; the Conservatives had won a crushing general election victory. Labour had lost many seats and the Liberal Democrats had virtually disappeared.

An Exit Poll is pretty trustworthy and within minutes of its announcement the British Pound was surging on the financial bourses. The United Kingdom had voted for stability.

All that was left to be decided was the scale of Cameron’s victory (the Conservatives finally ended up with 331 MPs, Labour 232, the Liberal Democrats just 8) and which MPs had lost their seats. Famous names were about to disappear from the political scene.

The Liberal Democrats won 56 seats in 2010 but were heavily punished due to Nick Clegg’s pre-2010 election promise that he would abolish tuition fees for university students. He reneged once he was in coalition with the Conservatives.

For those supportive of Israel the demise of the Lib Dems is sweet. If the Israeli army was called on to defend Israelis from Hamas’ rockets Nick Clegg would call for an arms embargo on Israel.

And one has to question how Clegg can lay claim to any morals after not sacking David Ward who suggested that Jews had not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

After minimal admonition from his party leader Ward was free to continue as a Liberal Democrat. Pleased to report that Ward has now been swept away politically by the good people of Bradford East.

And the good people of Bradford West swept away the Respect Party’s  George Galloway. Maybe they felt that Galloway was far more concerned with Tehran West than Bradford West.

It would be nice to think that Bradfordians also felt uncomfortable with his venomous anti-Zionist rhetoric (he declared Bradford an Israel-free zone) and were concerned for Bradford’s small Jewish population.

It was also goodbye to Simon Hughes and Bob Russell, two more anti-Israel Liberal Democrats swept away in the political tsunami.

Meanwhile, Labour lost 24 seats from last time! Much of Labour’s Parliamentary party is still anti-Israel and Labour’s main anti-Israel firebrands survived, including the likes of Gerald Kaufman, Andy Slaughter and Richard Burden who has met with Hamas. Labour also added Rupa Huq to their anti-Israel numbers.

For five years Labour has been isolationist on the foreign policy front. It voted not to assist the Syrian people being slaughtered by Assad.

There was, however, one country on which Labour was not isolationist: Israel. Precious parliamentary time was wasted by Labour MPs these last five years smearing Israel as evil and debating, and voting for, a future Palestinian state.

But despite the election results there is no room for complacency for British Jews. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) have virtually swept away Labour in Scotland. They grew from six to an astonishing 56 MPs!

The SNP like to paint themselves as supportive of multiculturalism but there is, again, one country they are not too accepting of: Israel.

These are SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s words to the ‘Ending Scottish Arms Trade with Israel’ conference only yesterday:

“As you may be aware, during the recent conflict in Gaza the Scottish Government wrote to the UK Government urging an embargo on arms sales to Israel. The Scottish Government is a firm friend of Palestine and we will continue to press this issue after the election.”

An SNP council also once voted to ban Israeli books in its libraries.

No doubt the SNP will soon be joining forces with Labour, what’s left of the Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party to attack Israel.

In the meantime the average hard-working grassroots pro-Israel activist can enjoy some well-earned schadenfreude at the demise of Galloway and Ward.

Advertisement

Trigger from Only Fools and Horses says “Don’t attack Iran”.

Roger Lloyd Pack - "intellect has rapidly diminished over the years until it reached its current level of hilarious stupidity"

It’s a shame when an actor from one of Britain’s best loved comedies joins with the forces of darkness to come to the defence of one of the world’s most reviled regimes, but such is the fate of Roger Lloyd Pack who played Trigger in the BBC’s Only Fools and Horses.

Lloyd Pack is a seasoned anti-Israel activist and so it is no surprise to find his signature among the usual suspects in a letter to Wednesday’s Guardian supporting Stop The War Coalition’s Don’t Attack Iran Campaign.

Ironically, the BBC website gives the following description of Trigger:

“Although initially a (relatively speaking) sharp-minded villain Trigger’s intellect has rapidly diminished over the years until it reached its current level of hilarious stupidity.”

Who said art doesn’t sometimes mirror life?

The Guardian website even generously links the letter to the Don’t Attack Iran Campaign website. Why take out an expensive ad in a national newspaper, hire an expensive London venue or print millions of leaflets when all you need do nowadays is write a letter to The Guardian who will give you free advertising space if you’re anti-Israel.

The familiarity of these hardcore anti-Israel signatories is positive in as much as it shows how so alone they are in their support for such an oppressive ideology as Iran’s:

Tony Benn,
Jeremy Corbyn MP,
Brian Eno,
Lindsey German,
George Galloway,
Kate Hudson,
Jemima Khan,
Ken Loach,
Roger Lloyd Pack,
Lowkey,
Len McCluskey,
John McDonnell MP,
John Pilger,
Michael Rosen,
Jenny Tonge.

You’d have thought that after her forced resignation from her party after wishing away Israel’s existence they might have left Jenny Tonge off for once but, then again, her recent statements that “Israel is not going to be there forever” and “then they will reap what they have sown” ties in nicely with Ahmadinejad’s genocidal desire to wipe Israel off the map.

Some say Ahmadinejad was mistranslated and that he merely wanted to eradicate Zionism.

Let’s forget that Israel and Zionism are not mutually exclusive and gloss over Ahmadinejad’s “mistranslation” and listen to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who, as reported by Press TV, “described Israel as a cancerous tumor that must be removed”.

It doesn’t get more unambiguous than that and straight from the fool’s and horse’s mouth!

And calling it an attack on Iran is like calling Operation Cast Lead an attack on Gaza or on the Palestinians when, in actual fact, it was a legitimate attack on the terrorist group Hamas in self-defence.

Attacking Iran’s nuclear sites will also be a legitimate act of self-defence unless Iran opens itself up to a full nuclear inspection in accordance with its non-proliferation treaty obligations, something that it has so far proved suspiciously unwilling to do.

And calling itself Stop The War Coalition is as equally disingenuous. Let Them Die Coalition would be far more accurate judging by their calls for non-intervention in Libya and, now, Syria.

The Guardian letter compares the build up to a possible war with Iran to that with Iraq. But Stop The War Coalition’s approach is itself reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of another evil regime.

Galloway and German say they aren’t pacifists and Galloway has said that World War Two was a just war, but how can he, and we, be so sure he would have called it “just” at the time.

Stop The War Coalition is, basically, an organisation that supports non-intervention against regimes that are anti-American and/or anti-Israel. They were ecstatic when pro-American/pro-Israel Mubarak fell in Egypt but have criticised NATO’s ousting of anti-American/anti-Israel Gaddafi and will no way want Assad to fall with the negative impact that would have on Iran and, ultimately, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The hypocrisy of the signatories to The Guardian letter is fully exposed when Stop The War Coalition feels comfortable standing back watching Libyans and Syrians slaughtered in their droves while defending the vile Iranian regime and staying silent about the continued oppression of Iran’s women, gays, Jews (the 25,000 strong community is limited to one MP), Bahais, Kurds and anyone wanting to live a life in Iran as free as those signatories themselves can do in the west.

Muslim Brotherhood’s Dr Kamal El-Helbawy defines who is a Jew, and who isn’t.

Dr Kamal El-Helbawy, Andrew Murray, Seumas Milne at the SOAS Respect meeting.

When I went to SOAS on Sunday for the Respect Party’s public meeting Where now for Egypt and the Middle East?, chaired by The Guardian’s Seumas Milne, I didn’t expect a sermon on who is, and who is not, a Jew.

Dr Kamal El-Helbawy, Chair of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and former speaker for the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, was updating us on the political situation in Egypt as he saw it. He welcomed the fact that 75% of the new Egyptian parliament was now Islamic, but said that he hoped for increased Coptic Christian participation and the promotion of women.

The Muslim Brotherhood isn’t especially keen on Jews. For example, Hamas, the Brotherhood’s subsidiary in Gaza, remembers us in their Charter by calling for us to be killed.

However, Dr Kamal El-Helbawy seemed to be concentrating on Egypt’s pressing internal issues. Could this be a new Egypt; a Light Unto the Arab nations, I thought? Fifteen minutes into his speech and Dr Kamal El-Helbawy still hadn’t mentioned Israel and the Palestinians.

Finally, Dr Kamal El-Helbawy, a self-proclaimed scholar of comparative religion, introduced the subject as follows (see clip 1 below):

“I have Jewish friends who are really Jewish. They stay with me, they eat with me, they sleep with us at home. Who are real friends. Like Neturei Karta people. Like Dovid Weiss and hundreds of others, who are real Jews. And we respect them and we love them. We are brothers in humanity if not in religion. But unfortunately the ones we have in Israel, the Zionists, are not Jews. I am happy with what usually my dear brother George Galloway says ‘atheist Jews’. Even I say they are Zionists. They have nothing, nothing at all related to Jewish religion. Moses did not order people to kill each other and the Christ did not ask people to kill each other or colonise each other or destroy each other or stop, for example, Iran doing good research in atomic energy.”

During the Q&A I said I thought it disrespectful of him to tell us who is, and who isn’t, Jewish and that just because one might disagree with someone’s political view shouldn’t make anyone less of a Muslim, Jew or Christian for it. To applause he responded (see clip 2 below):

“I have 100% right to define. I am a scholar of comparative religion as well. And I understand, and I have many friends who are Jews, and I don’t believe that the Nobel Laureate Peres is a Jew at all, is a Jew. Who is a Jew is the one who follows Moses, peace be upon Him. Who’s a Christian is the one who follows Jesus Christ, peace upon Him. Who is a Muslim is the one who follows Muhammad the Prophet, peace be upon Him. So it is not difficult to define who is a Jew and can measure who is a Jew, who is not. If you kill you are not a Jew, because Moses did not ask you to kill people. If you ousted them from their lands and houses and destroy them you are not a Jew.”

Meanwhile, Gorgeous George described (see clip 3) the Balfour Declaration as “142 words that have produced nearly a hundred years of misery and disaster in the Middle East” before continuing:

“Mark Sykes hated Jews. He was a vicious, foul anti-Semite, but he loved Israel and he loved the idea of Israel. Like so many he saw Zionism as a means of ensuring that he would never have to look at Jewish people on the streets of London. He talked openly about ‘we’ll be able to clean the East End of London if we can create Israel and, by one means or another, encourage or otherwise, the Jews of the East End of London to go and live in Palestine’. He hated Arabs also who he described as venal and lazy.”

Amid all this fascination with Jews Galloway, Kate Hudson, General Secretary of CND, and Andrew Murray, founder of the Stop The War Coalition, rejected all types of outside intervention in the affairs of Syria instead calling for the revolution to be allowed to take place from the ground upwards on the basis that there had never been an example of outside intervention working effectively in the Middle East and that such intervention always took place out of pure self-interest.

Clip 1: Dr Kamal El-Helbawy discusses Israel and the Palestinians

Clip 2: Dr Kamal El-Helbawy responds to criticism of his definition of Jews

Clip3: George Galloway on Mark Sykes and more

George Galloway: “Iran ready to fight to the last drop of blood”.

Shirin Shafaie, Chris Nineham, Tony Benn, Lindsey German, Abbas Edalat prepare to spout nonsense.

George Galloway gave warning that should Iran be attacked by Israel then “the Persian Gulf will be on fire, the Straights of Hormuz will be on fire and the allies of America in the Gulf will be on fire” and Iran will also answer “inside Iraq”.

And he said that Iran is ready to fight to the last drop of blood.

He called on Muslims not to “fall for this gigantic fraud in which the imperialist countries who were bombing and murdering one kind of Muslim in Iraq now want to mobilise that kind of Muslim against another kind of Muslim on a sectarian basis dividing the Muslim world” and he warned that “once they’ve dealt with the Shi’ites, they’ll deal with you”:

Galloway was the final act in Monday night’s Don’t Attack Iran meeting in London organised by The Stop The War Coalition, a coalition that is against any war (unless it’s against Israel, of course), even the war in Libya which would have left possibly thousands to be massacred in Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces had NATO not intervened.

And only a dunce from the Green Party could invoke the Nazis like Darren Johnson AM did when he warned that attacking Iran would unite the whole of Iran just like attacks by the Nazis even united the Conservatives and the Communists in this country:

Well, that wasn’t the case in Libya was it! NATO’s attacks on Gaddafi’s troops strengthened the opposition leading to Gaddafi’s downfall. And, likewise, I am sure that the good people of Iran would welcome an attack on their own cruel regime that still stones women to death and hangs gays for being gay. Johnson should stick to dealing with matters to do with London as he obviously hasn’t a clue about foreign affairs.

And then there was Tony Benn, the President of The Stop The War Coalition, claiming that the only reason America wants to attack Iran is because of its oil. Oh come on, Tony, you can do better than reel off that tired old line:

Benn disappeared early after the usual announcement that he had to be up early to give yet another talk, although it was more likely the lure of a hot cup of cocoa and a pair of warm slippers that sent him on his way.

Other speakers told us how cuddly and peaceful today’s Iran, basically, is. It had never attacked anyone, don’t you know!

Abbas Edalat, a professor in Computer Science at Imperial College, thought the war against Iran had started in 1979 after the Revolution, while Shirin Shafaie, a researcher at SOAS, claimed it started as far back as 1953 with the overthrow of Mossadeq.

Edalat claimed there was even a self-imposed fatwa against Iran possessing nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction and that the aim of the West was to recolonise Iran like it did in 1953.

These people honestly believe the rubbish that pours out of their mouths. It is a remarkable sociological study to hear such delusion and to see how an audience, albeit a small one, laps up this rhetoric.

Oh, and just in case there wasn’t enough instability in the Middle East I was passed a leaflet detailing how Palestinians living inside Israel and those from the West Bank and Gaza are due to be joined by Palestinians and others from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan for a Global March to Jerusalem arriving in Jerusalem on “Land Day” (30th March 2012 to you and me).

For an organisation that claims to want to stop war The Stop The War Coalition tries its damned hardest to encourage as much bloodshed in the Middle East as it possibly can.

The Egyptian Revolution comes to Holborn.

John Reece shows off his photos of his trip to revolutionary Cairo.

Just before last night’s Stop the War Coalition’s meeting in London in support of the Egyptian Revolution began I turned to Jonathan Hoffman and asked him how long he thought it would it take before they mentioned Israel.

“Immediately”, was his grim response.

And he wasn’t wrong. The first speaker up was Bernard Regan of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (see clip below).

Next was Daud Abdullah, not known for his pro-Israel sympathies. Referring to events in Egypt he said there will be casualties but “the greatest casualty will be Israel.”

Lowkey, a rapper best known for his tune Free Palestine, couldn’t help himself either, ending his speech with the cry, “The path to the liberation of Jerusalem runs through Cairo”.

The finale was left to George Galloway who described Mubarak as a “murderer, torturer and dictator” who would “be lucky to avoid being strung up from the street lamps”.

But when Galloway met Saddam Hussein, also a murderer, torturer and dictator, he said to him: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength and your indefatigability.” (Galloway claims he was addressing the Iraqi public, not Sadaam.)

George roused an already buoyant crowd further by saying that “the Palestinian hand will be immeasurably strengthened by an Arab Egypt.” (see clip below.)

Two Egyptian activists were eventually allowed to speak. Their cause wasn’t totally hijacked (no pun intended) and they didn’t mention Israel once. They just wanted to be free.

We also heard from two Stop the War Coalition activists who, while 30,000 Brits. are trying to leave Egypt, actually flew in to Cairo for the weekend especially!

John Reece showed us his photos (see background above) and informed us of the massive under-reporting in the British media of the people on the streets of Egypt.

Although, Reece said, the Egyptian army reported one million in Cairo every one he knows spoke of two million. He estimates that the figure was somewhere between four and eight million for Egypt as a whole.

Judith Orr said the demonstrators told her that “we are not Muslim, Christian or Jewish. We are all Egyptians!”

But George Galloway told her, and others, what he thought of that:

“We have no need to go round saying this is not a Muslim revolution. Egypt is overwhelmingly a Muslim country and there’s nothing wrong with that. There are Christians and Muslims, Socialists and Communists, Liberals and Centrists, and non-political people, who just want freedom who are involved in this Revolution. But a very significant number of the people of Egypt support the Islamic Movement of Egypt and that Movement has no need to hide itself under a bushel.”

Egyptians should heed George’s words and put all notions of freedom to the back of their minds for now just in case the Muslim Brothers are, indeed, eventually successful.

Clips from last night:

2010

A bad year for Israel in the UK has also been a bad year for many of those who have briefed so viciously against Israel.

Nick Clegg, who called for Israel to be disarmed during Operation Cast Lead in the wake of thousands of Hamas rockets hitting Israeli towns, became Deputy Prime-Minister in the coalition government but has since had his new found credibility shattered having reneged on a pre-election promise that had won his party the student vote; not to increase tuition fees.

Clegg and his anti-Israel Liberal Democrat party will find it difficult to be taken seriously in future, including on Israel.

Lauren Booth seems to have hit financial rock bottom with her bankruptcy and George Galloway lost his national radio slot on Talksport and was ousted from Parliament at the General Election along with Martin Linton, Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine.

Woe betide those who fall from power. The pro-Arab Lobby will have no use for them and will end up looking elsewhere.

So one man’s loss is another’s gain and the new anti-Israel voice on the block is Andrew Slaughter, who retained his seat in the election.

Although Slaughter is Labour’s Shadow Justice Minister that didn’t stop him recently meeting Hamas; the organisation that likes to send Palestinians into Israeli restaurants and discos primed with bombs to murder as many Jews as possible.

It has been a year where the picket of Ahava in Covent Garden has taken root, with the objective of closing it down.

In a way it has been a sad but fascinating experience to see the type of person that turns up to picket a Jewish owned shop.

Less attention has been paid to the regular thursday evening anti-Israel picket outside Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street whose objective is to stop people shopping there on the basis that M&S was a chief funder of Israel’s creation and growth; proof if it ever was needed that Israel-hate is not premised on concern for international law but on Israel’s existence per se.

It is also interesting to note how many of the Ahava protesters are loathe to be filmed, constantly covering their faces.

One must also question if they are solely concerned about human rights why they don’t picket Iranian, Egyptian, Russian, Chinese and Sudanese businesses.

If Ahava does close even the protesters will be disappointed as they will be forced to find another Israeli outlet to vent their anger against.

Other low points of 2010 were:

1. The EDO case, where a judge somehow found it within himself, during his summing up to the jury, to show admiration for those who had smashed up a British arms-making factory.

2. Phil Woolas losing his Parliamentary seat after his Lib Dem opponent ran crying to the courts accusing Woolas of lying about him, when lying on political leaflets is, sadly, a part of British election culture. There was also MPAC’s sinister intervention against Woolas.

3. Mick Davies, head of UJIA, using “Apartheid” in relation to Israel.

4. The Law Society allowing itself to be taken over for a weekend Israel hatefest in the form of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine.

5. Hearing “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz” at Elland Road.

Thank you to those that have given their encouragement over the last year (including Oyvagoy, Jeremy Havardi, MelchettMike, CIFWatch, ModernityBlog, Harry’s Place, ElderofZiyon, The London Jewish News, The Jewish Chronicle and The Jerusalem Post) and many other individuals, including some incredible commenters from whom I have learnt more than I could imagine.

It has also been a year in which England retained the Ashes but lost a World Cup.

Ken Bates, Leeds United’s Chairman, summed up the World Cup debacle perfectly in his recent programme notes for the QPR game:

“FIFA finally lost all credibility when they handed the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. That idiot Blatter said the object was to take football into new territories. The Qatar episode should be fun with the Persian Gulf on one side and (a) million square miles of desert on the other. Don’t make me laugh! Money talks – but to who? If Qatar wanted to make a lasting impact on the world they could help their fellow Muslims in Palestine to end 60 years of misery and enable them to establish a Palestinian state. A few bob to help rebuild Afghanistan wouldn’t go amiss either.”

Finishing on a high note Israel has just struck gas; £61 billion worth of the stuff, which sent the Tel Aviv stock exchange to an all time high. This should give Israel energy independence for 90 years and could allow for exports to Europe.

As James Hider of The Times comments the old joke about Moses leading the Jewish people to the one place in the Middle East that does not have oil is not so funny anymore.

Happy New Year everyone!

A Story of Two Flotillas

1940 Dunkirk evacuation (kingofpeace.blogspot.com)

There are two flotillas of ships sailing today and the contrast could not be more different.

The brave:

Today is the 70th anniversary of the evacuation of Dunkirk that gave us the term the “Dunkirk spirit”. It was a crucial moment in World War Two.

Between 27 May and 4 June 1940 338,000 British and French soldiers were rescued from the beaches of northern France having been pushed back by the invading Germans.

700 vessels ranging from pleasure craft to fishing boats worked under a hail of German bombs to take the Allied troops off the beaches and ferry them to larger ships so they could be brought home.

Winston Churchill called it a “miracle of deliverance” and the evacuation is seen as one of several events in 1940 that determined the outcome of the war.

To mark the anniversary a flotilla of 60 small ships set sail from southern England and will return on 31 May.

The not-so-brave:

Then there is another flotilla supported by Viva Palestina and a Turkish charity. This one has just set sail to try to break the so-called “siege of Gaza”.

The website of Viva Palestina, which has conducted past convoys to Gaza, states in its narrative on the current flotilla: “The Israeli government has turned Gaza into a prisoner camp and has been carrying out a genocide. This camp and genocidal acts very much resemble Hitler’s actions in history.”

Israel and Egypt have imposed restrictions on Gaza to stop Hamas, the Islamist resistance movement, firing thousands of Kassam rockets into Israel.

Any such comparison of Gaza to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews and four million gays, communists, gypsies and disabled people were systematically murdered, is purely sickening.

The people of Gaza should blame Hamas for their suffering, not Israel.

But then we know what happens if they so much as protest against Hamas. Hamas is notorious for binding the hands and legs of so-called “traitors” before throwing them off the tops of buildings to certain death.

Either that or the “traitors” are shot in both knees.

Hamas doesn’t do trials.

When Viva Palestina conducted a convoy to Gaza in February/March 2009 George Galloway, according to the Charity Commission, confirmed that £25,000 of personal money was handed to Hamas along with 100 vehicles.

I hope the current flotilla will at least bring something constructive to the area but when Viva Palestina tried to enter Gaza from Egypt in January an Egyptian border guard was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper.

While Israel does in fact let in necessities and aid to Gaza it is Islamic extremists who are making life in Gaza intolerable, even to the extent of destroying a United Nations summer camp for children. They accused the UN of promoting immorality.

The current convoy is trying to enter Gaza via sea instead of land after the extended trip Viva Palestina was sent on by the Egyptian authorities in January.

So we recall today the brave men and women of the Dunkirk evacuation for their bravery 70 years ago while under heavy bombardment from the Nazis.

There will never be enough gratitude that we can show them for what they did.

The same may not be said for the activists on the convoy currently en route to Gaza*.

* The father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit asked the current convoy to carry a parcel and letter into the Gaza Strip for his son, who has been kept in isolation by Hamas for coming up to four years now. The activists refused.

Gaza flotilla

Red Ken explains suicide bombings in Israel (again)

Ken Livingstone, ex Mayor of London, has given an interview on Press TV (see below) to Andrew Gilligan, Daily Telegraph journalist. In it Livingstone explains suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and accuses respected journalist, Martin Bright, of being an “Islamophobe”.

Livingstone indicated that he will be standing again for London Mayor in 2012.

Gilligan presses Livingstone on the embrace he gave to Islamic preacher, Yusuf “homosexuality is a sin” al-Qaradawi, who Livingstone views as “a great reforming radical”. Livingstone simply compares al-Qaradawi’s views on homosexuality to those of the Chief Rabbi and the Church of England.

Livingstone explains that although al-Qaradawi denounced 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings, he makes the exception for suicide bombings inside Israel because the Palestinians’ land is occupied and they have no weapons apart from their own bodies.

Livingstone thinks that the only reason Jews might be offended by this mentality is because they defend Israel “right or wrong”. He says: “There would not be any Palestine suicide bombers if Israel withdrew from the occupied lands. If Israel wants peace it should withdraw from the occupied territories and dismantle its nuclear weapons.”

To most people this would sound like someone who condones suicide bombings in Israel. Gilligan puts this to Livingstone, who denies it. Gilligan does not, sadly, press Livingstone further on this point.

Next Gilligan asks Livingstone about his exchange with Evening Standard journalist Oliver Finegold, whom Livingstone knew to be Jewish when accusing him of being a “concentration camp guard”. Livingstone explains he will not exempt Finegold from slurs about him being a journalist just because he is a Jew: “He’s a reporter before he’s a Jew.”

Livingstone also refers to Martin Bright, respected Jewish Chronicle and Spectator journalist, as “a bit of an Islamophobe”. Gilligan suggests that Livingstone makes the “Islamophobia” accusation too readily against people who disagree with his views and reminded him that he recently had to apologise and pay damages to Michael Keith for making a similar accusation.

Livingstone does not seem to appreciate the difference between Islamism, adhered to by a tiny minority of Muslims and who interprete the Koran in a violent manner, and Islam itself. Livingstone suggests that Muslims in general are under attack from “the parties and newspapers of the right”.

But Gilligan points out that the main critics of Islamic Forum of Europe in his own Dispatches programme were Muslims. Gilligan says he has seen the transcripts of the IFE who seem to say one thing to the likes of Livingstone but something else to others. According to Gilligan, Islamists wish to “overthrow western style democracy”.

Livingstone suggests that there is no way that these kinds of Muslims would wish to work with someone like himself: “Someone who is a fundamentalist Muslim is not going to be prepared to work with me, an atheist and promoter of homosexual tolerance. I’m everything they would loathe and abhor.”

Gilligan points out that “entryism” is the core of Islamism: “They enter into conventional democratic political parties and take them over. That’s there is Maududi.”

Analysis:

Livingstone’s anti-Zionist instincts are on full display here. He once said that Israel should never have been created. He blamed his loss of office to Johnson on the Board of Deputies of British Jews but he cannot seem to accept that his views are not only rejected by Jews but by British society more generally.

In Part 1 (below) Livingstone attacks the current London Mayor, Boris Johnson, even going so far as crediting him with support from the BNP, something that Johnson has no control over. This echoes the accusation that Israel is supported by the English Defence League. Again, this is something Israel cannot control but it is enough for the anti-Zionist brigade to utilise for their criticism of Israel.

In Part 2 (below at 3 mins 35) Livingstone is questioned by Gilligan over the accusation that Livingstone has been “too close to radical Muslims”. Here Livingstone seems to come very close to condoning suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. In a press conference a few weeks after 7/7 he expressed similar sentiments: “Palestinians don’t have jet fighters. They only have their bodies to use as weapons. In that unfair balance, that is what people use.”

And Livingstone views criticising fundamentalist Islam as a case of Islamophobia. He accuses Martin Bright and Gilligan himself of being Islamophobic. Someone who cannot make this basic distinction is plain ignorant.

Livingstone regularly employs what David Hirsh refers to as the Livingstone Formulation when Israel is criticised: “For too long the accusation of anti-Semitism has been used against anyone who is critical of the policies of the Israeli government, as I have been.” (Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism Cosmopolitan Reflections, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary study of Antisemitism, 2007, P.38).

By casting both Bright and Gilligan as Islamophobes this formulation is now being extended to defend criticism of all forms of Islam, including Islamism. Gilligan is right to refer to Maududi. The hard-left in the UK takes homophobes like al-Qaradawi at face value when al-Qaradawi says to Livingstone “It is wrong to strike homosexuals”.

The hard-left is quite flexible at being hoaxed into having sympathy with Islamism eventhough at the core of Islamism is an anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic ideology. This is everything the left would normally reject.

But then again Islamists and the hard-left share one enduring core value: the absence of a Jewish state.

On the Oliver Finegold affair David Hirsh also questions whether Livingstone would have suggested to a black journalist who had similarly questioned him whether he was a “plantation owner”. Likewise, something similar to a Muslim journalist.

All that said, British Muslims are starting to reject those on the hard-left who they feel do not reflect their own Islam, as we saw on election night when a group of 200 Muslims told George Galloway what they thought of him as both he and his Respect Party were rejected by the British people.

With Livingstone also rejected as London’s Mayor this is an encouraging sign.

Galloway gone from Talksport.

Tonight really is different from all other nights. After four years of fulminating and proselytising against Israel on Talksport Radio every friday and saturday night, George Galloway’s radio show is no more.

Galloway says:

“After a run of more than four years the highly popular radio show – The Mother of All Talkshows – has been killed off by the TalkSport management. I believe this is a business mistake, but then I don’t run the radio station and such decisions are not mine to take….It is unlikely that the TalkSport management will change their mind and re-instate the show – but you never know.”

George Galloway listening on.

Obviously, George’s listening figures fell short of Talksport’s desires.

Reasoned listeners enjoy a debate but what they tend to get with George is just one-side of the argument.

(Yours truly was “banned” from the show for “deceiving the listeners”.)

Callers had to cough up 10 pence-per-minute to hang on the line while George seems to have earned over £100k a year while working at Talksport.

George is instead launching an internet radio station called Rebel Radio which will be “free speech radio, beyond Ofcom”.

The internet is the best place for George but there will be some television appearances and there is the general election to consider.

In 2005 when George was elected in Bethnal Green and Bow he received 15,801 votes out of the 44,007 votes cast out of, approximately, 87,000 eligible voters.

Incredibly, only some 18% of his constituents actually voted for him!

Approximately 82% of the voters he has represented over the last five years didn’t “vote George”.

Maybe this partially explains why on May 6th George will be standing in neighbouring Poplar and Limehouse instead.

Much more serious are his appearances at our universities.

At Queen Mary, University of London recently he produced this chilling rhetoric about Israel:

“I want to say to those of ill-will, should any of them be present here this evening. We will never be intimidated by you. You can send all the emails you can organise, all the synthetic fury that you like. You can complain to OFCOM, you can complain to the Charity Commission, you can even complain to the Metropolitan Police. We will never be intimidated by you. We intend to speak the truth. We will never put down the banner of truth on this issue. We will not be silenced. You cannot intimidate us. If you kill us, our sons will pick up the banner. If you kills our sons, our daughters will pick up the banner. If you kill our daughters, others will pick up the banner. This idea of the liberation of Palestine is not negotiable and it’s not stoppable. It’s an idea whose time has come and it’s going to win, be sure about that. Be sure that Palestine will be free, that the Palestinian people will return to their homes and that the gangsters running the government of what they call Israel will in the end be defeated, because the essence of their ideology is apartheid.”

He continued: “Never make the mistake of imagining that supporters of Zionism and Israel liked Jews. If you think George Bush liked Jews you never visited his golf club in Texas, where they don’t let them in, at least as members.”

I have still to understand who those of “ill-will” might be and why anyone would want to kill George or his sons or daughters.

So George is gone but not without at least some fun memories as when “Mark” called in to his show. “Mark” accused George of being an “anti-Semite” and George then demanded “Mark’s” name and address live on air so he could send him a writ for libel.

Is George really deluded enough to think someone will reveal their full name and home address on national radio?

I won’t publish the call here but you could possibly go to youtube and search for “george galloway + accusation of anti Semitism = fireworks!”

I don’t think George is anti-Semitic in the slightest but it is a fun listen!

Anyway, coming to a laptop near you soon, George Galloway at Rebel Radio.

Free the Gaza 22 now!

The January 2009 London protests against Israel's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

A general election must be approaching.

Political demands are getting more and more eccentric as politicians appeal to those religious minorities who can return them to power and it’s not just the Lib Dems who are expertly adept at this.

George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn made Nick Clegg seem positively liberal when they spoke at the recent “Public meeting on jailing of Gaza protesters“.

After the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six now comes the “Free the Gaza 22” campaign.

At the meet we were informed that there were 119 arrests at the protests that took place in London last January against Israel’s Operation Cast Lead against Hamas.

“Almost all were Muslim,” we were told. 22 had already been jailed with many more to follow. Sentences ranged from eight months to two and a half years.

“The majority were 16 to 19 years old, many were just 15 and 16 and one was as young as 12.”

Most of the meet was spent accusing the police of making political arrests and the judiciary of handing out political sentences both in order to discourage Muslims from taking to the streets to protest in the future. Allegations of Islamaphobia were rife throughout the meet.

Jeremy Corbyn closed the meeting with the following eccentric demands:
1. The 22 in prison should be immediately released.
2. No one standing trial should go to prison.
3. All complaints against the police should be investigated.
4. There should be an independent review of the police operation.
5. There should be a broader campaign against the criminalisation of the Muslim community.

I am as much against Islamaphobia as anyone but whoever remembers seeing the violence perpetrated by thugs at the London demonstration will not be surprised in the slightest by the prison sentences, even for first time offenders.

But Joanne Gilmore, the chief researcher, suggested that these were “relatively minor disturbances”.

Well if you call knocking a policeman unconscious and smashing up Starbucks “relatively minor” one can start to understand why certain people don’t take seriously the thousands of Kassam rockets that have pounded Israeli towns over the years and which caused Israel to go into Gaza to stop them.

And when the Stop the War Coalition repeatedly refers to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as attacks on Muslims then what do they expect when thousands of British Muslims come out on to the streets of London to violently protest.

The lies feeds the anger that creates the violence that causes the arrests and the imprisonment.

Make your own mind up about who is responsible for the violence:

But the meet started off in farcical circumstances.

George Galloway stood up to give his cynical view on how the police behaved during the protests. He blamed their heavy-handedness on the election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London and a visit by George Bush to 10, Downing Street.

Galloway told of how he was assaulted in the underpass at Knightsbridge and how the law is being used to discourage Muslims:

“If you were Osama Bin Laden you would be rubbing your hands with glee. He would view our democracy as a sham. The police are achieving the opposite of that they intend.”

At that point two Iranians who were sat close by could not stay silent any longer and started remonstrating George’s support for the Ahmadinejad regime.

Guess who walked in to save the day for George but the……police!

There was George condemning the police but seconds later obsequiously pointing out to two police officers the source of the interruption and having the two protestors (who were merely shouting) removed.

George then said he hoped the police will treat the two protestors better then he himself was treated by the police before, in the same breathe, accusing the protesters of being Iranian Monarchists, an allegation which would see them sentenced to death in Iran, the fate of 21-year old Amir-Reza Arefi last month.

See the protest below (I do not endorse the title of the video in the slightest) and note how on 2 minutes 8 seconds George’s hand enters, screen left (black sleeve), to obsequiously point out to the police the protesters he wanted removed by the same police force that only seconds earlier he had been condemning.

As George, himself, repeatedly says: “You couldn’t make it up!”